

The best deal came when Windows 8 was launched in 2012: Microsoft offered an upgrade from Windows XP to Windows 8 Pro for $39.99 or £25, discounted from $199.99 or £189.99. Of course, Microsoft has also released new operating systems since 2001, with cut-price deals to tempt people to upgrade to Windows Vista in 2006 and Windows 7 in 2009. The Ubuntu version of Linux hadn't even been launched: it first appeared three years after XP.
#Big mac for a penny 2014 mac os x
Apple has not only shipped eight versions of Mac OS X since then, it has dumped PowerPC for Intel chips. I'll be amazed if any other operating system that came out around the same time as XP - Mac OS X 10.1 (Puma), IBM OS/2 4.52, Novell NetWare 6.0 etc - still gets free support. However, in the 12 years since you bought your Dell, you haven't paid Microsoft a penny, so threatening to withdraw your custom isn't going to cut much ice. In return, you have had 10 or 12 years' use, three major updates - Service Pack 1 (in 2002), SP2 (2004) and SP3 (2008) - plus new browsers and other free programs such as the Windows Live Suite. Dell and HP probably paid Microsoft about $45 each for these copies of XP, and if they bundled crapware with the operating system, you paid somewhat less. But I don't think you should be incensed, because you've had a very good deal. Windows XP support is ending as part of Microsoft's standard software lifecycle, and Microsoft has stepped up its warnings over the past year. It appears that I may be able to upgrade both PCs from Windows XP, but to what? Windows 7 or 8? Will this completely kill performance, as I assume Windows 7 and 8 are more resource hungry than XP! It refused to work with two new 1GB DIMMs alongside the two existing 512MB DIMMs so had to take them out, but I could add two more 1GB RAMs. I just inherited this family hand-me-down and added RAM.

(2) HP Compaq Presario SR1000 (circa 2004) with a 3.4GHz Pentium 4, 2GB of memory and 250GB hard disk.

I added RAM and an external 500GB hard drive.
#Big mac for a penny 2014 driver
The original screen and video driver failed. (1) Dell Dimension 4800 (circa 2002) with a 2.66GHz Pentium 4, 2.5GB of memory, 70GB hard disk. What about the thousands of people who still happily use XP? I have two PCs that my family uses on a daily basis. I've just found out about, and am incensed at, Microsoft's decision to stop supporting Windows XP with security updates from April 8, 2014.
